


Judaism, Death, & Magic

by zephyrprince



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Hebrew Bible, The Book of Samuel
Genre: Bible, British Character(s), British source, Canon Jewish Character(s), Challenge: In The Beginning, Community: in_the_beginning, Gen, Israel, Israeli character(s), Italian Character(s), Italy, Jewish Character(s), Judaism, Original Character(s), Padua
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-09
Updated: 2011-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephyrprince/pseuds/zephyrprince
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after the Battle of Hogwarts, Anthony Goldstein goes in search of his non-magical roots and finds the story of Saul and the Witch of Endor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Judaism, Death, & Magic

Anthony sat in one of a handful of high backed wooden chairs arranged haphazardly in the middle of the room. He glanced around at the walls lined with bookshelves. If his mind hadn’t been so empty, it might have occurred that this must be the rabbi’s office or what passed for it. Though indecorous, the space certainly emanated a sense of scholarship, dusty evidence of a long life of learning visible in every corner. But none of this crossed Anthony’s mind. And it had been the same for the entire preceding year. He slumped lower against the straight-cut chair back.

Nestling into his own space, Rabbi Luzzatto turned down his nose and gazed at the boy over his small spectacles. His long grey beard jutted at a slight angle out of his chin, its bushiness only serving to contrast and highlight the bald white dome of his head. He could see that Anthony wasn’t surveying his own visage the way he was taking in the boy, but it wasn’t entirely surprising. He had had many conversations like the one they were about to engage in over the years. And with word of the Battle of Hogwarts having reached even his own distant ears, he had suspected that a time like this might eventually come.

“So you are half-blood then, young Anthony?” The specifics of an opening salvo weren’t important. It was more about breaking the silence. Still, blood status wasn’t what he’d expected to come out when he opened his mouth. A smile flicked at the edge of the rabbi’s mouth. He may no longer have been a practicing wizard, per se, but he still placed a measure of trust in certain magics.

For Anthony’s part, the query came equally unexpected, if he could be said to have had expectations. On the long journey into Italy, he’d questioned his motives many times in seeking this man out. The portkeys to cross great distances hadn’t been easy to track down. Moving from Diagon Alley to Paris wasn’t bad, but Padua seemed not to have even a small magical community so he’d spent a great deal of the journey moving through muggle transport channels. The idea of having a goal had cheered him somewhat but now that he could no longer move on autopilot he was experiencing a renewed sense of remorse.

Still, being asked about his parents, that was interesting. Or it was something, anyway.

“Half blood, yes. Mother witch, father Jew.”

“Hah, you say it like these are mutually exclusive bodies of people, boy.”

“Well it certainly feels that way.”

The rabbi raised an eye.

Anthony stammered, “I mean…. It just seems that most wizards with Jewish heritage lose touch with it once they’re integrated, and…”

“Ah, yes. Well that is certainly part of my own narrative,” the Rabbi responded, looking contemplative now.

Anthony felt distinctly uncomfortable, caught between his listlessness and this man’s very strange demeanor. He cut his eyes to the left but found nothing out the small window to adequately distract him.

The rabbi let out a long breath and removed his glasses, folding them neatly and laying them on the small table next to his chair.

“Anthony, let me be perfectly honest with you. I understand why you’ve come here. You’re not the first and you won’t be the last, but from what I can guess based on your age and nationality, you’ve been through something that most British Jews and wizards have been able to avoid in recent memory. You’ve experienced the kind of trauma our forebearers and our siblings in other parts of the world have known consistently throughout history…”

“It’s not me,” Anthony said, surprising himself. “What they did to me I can cope with, but…” He wasn’t sure that was true. The coldly logical part of his brain said that he had hardly been able to cope at all even with the aid of the group set up by the Wespurts, after Nigel’s… “I lost a friend.”

“Ahh,” the details began to dawn on Moshe. “I see.” The rabbi nodded, “And if there’s one thing that wizarding culture… well, that’s being flippant: There are many, many things… but if there’s one thing that the wizarding world doesn’t teach you about, it’s death.”

“Yes,” Anthony once again found himself avoiding eye contact with the older man. He fidgeted, brushing his long brown bangs into his face.

“You’re seemingly surrounded by it – ghosts, portraits of the dead, unforgivable curses, but the more it surrounds you, the less you really know.” The rabbi was intrigued at this particular line of discussion.

Anthony stared down at the floor.

“The two communities that intersect in your body and mine have not always had a favorable relationship, you know,” the rabbi continued.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh right – vaguely observant father, witch mother – you mentioned that. Well they haven’t. I can only just begin to gesture at the question of death, but this tension, this tension is at the heart of the matter. Allow me to tell you a story.”

-*~~*-*~~*-*~~*-*~~*-

Following his coronation at Gilgal, Saul, king of Israel, set about ridding the country of magic. It’s a common enough tale in the histories of the world – non-magical monarch feels threatened by that which he cannot access and does not understand and thus initiates a series of witch hunts. Those carried about by Saul, however, were unprecedented for the time and place of his reign – whole villages were razed to the ground, youth were ripped from their parents’ arms and slain before their very eyes, and, of course, a great many muggles were mistakenly killed simply for being clever.

The other side of this, however, is a similarly common tale. Just as the holy land was cleansed of the mystical, a neighboring state rose up against them, using their own wizards to full advantage. The Philistines to the south began gathering their forces for an attack and, upon hear the news, an emptiness formed in the pit of Saul’s stomach, growing every day as he feared he had been wrong.

Meanwhile, there was a very old witch in the village of Endor who had thus far managed to evade the soldiers sent out to purify the lands. Rather than take refuge in magic as many had, the witch concocted the strategy of hiding in plain sight. Those who made their huts unplottable were eventually apprehended as they emerged for this or that, but the witch left her hovel open to the eyes of all. Those who armed themselves with charmed medallions or daggers, unwittingly created a beacon calling to their hunters, but the witch carried no artifacts. She burned her books and threw her accoutrements into the sea.

Of course this did not mean she ceased to be a witch. In the time before wands, all one needed to practice was the body and the mind of a magician and the Witch of Endor had both. She was merely biding her time, waiting out this period as she had before.

And she always kept her nose to the wind. She knew when Saul’s age was coming to a close. She even had contact with the enemy when a Philistine animagus flew in through her window in the form of a shy albatross. He offered a handsome reward and a seat of honor serving their kingdom if only she would use her powers against the state of Israel. She did not accept for it was not quite time for her to act.

The time came to her, however, the very next day when, after his excessive sweat and hand wringing exhausted itself, Saul feebly disguised himself and went out into his country surreptitiously seeking anyone left who might be able to divine his plight. Though she’d protected herself well, the witch was not free of rumors and so the king rode into Endor and found her, asking for his fortune.

With her wits about her, the witch immediately saw through his costume, and so she took him to a nearby field that she knew had been used to bury the dead a century before. The witch was cunning and so although it did not require much, she made a great show of elaborate preparations for her spell. She drew a circle in the dirt around her with her fingers and wrote in obscure script upon the ground. She sat down in the center and closed her eyes.

At first Saul didn’t notice a change, but then slowly he could see the earth in front of her begin to tremble and soon something was clearly emerging, rising from below. As more and more came up, Saul’s eyes widened. It was Samuel. Hovering above the ground, the body of Samuel foretold Saul’s fall to the Philistines, and, of course, as the story goes, this troubled the king so deeply that it did, indeed, come to pass. But what is not told is the nature of the trick she pulled. The witch had brought up an inferius from the ground, reanimating the corpse of an anonymous peasant and draping it in enchantments merely to look like Samuel. Thus she was able to bring about the outcome she desired in revenge for Saul’s attacks on her people. In reality an inferius is no more alive than a rock; death is not that simple. But in this case, as with many, it caused a death. As Saul fell on his sword, the the witch, the inferius, and the Philistine animagus watched from an overlooking cliff top. She exhaled a sigh of relief and returned home.

-*~~*-*~~*-*~~*-*~~*-

Anthony wasn’t sure this had answered any of his questions, but as the rabbi’s story drew to a close, he began to ask himself what his questions had really been in the first place. What he knew was that the story had drawn him in fully and he’d been able to engage in a way he hadn’t since the year before the war when he was still engaged in his school subjects. He felt such an affinity for this fusion of his histories – a culture he’d wanted to escape and one he didn’t even know. It was as if a missing piece of himself had begun to reveal itself only just in earnest and what he knew was that he wanted more.

Moshe sat back, himself coming out of the story space only slowly, but as soon as he had he recognized what he read on the boy’s face.

“You’ll stay here then and study under me?”

Shocked as he had been the entire day, the boy felt blank again in the face of such a commitment, but the answer was clear.

“Yes.”


End file.
